The present disclosure relates generally to a method for parsing data, and particularly to a method of parsing binary data.
Hospitals typically utilize computer systems to manage the various departments within the hospital. Data about each patient is collected by a variety of computer systems. For example, a patient may be admitted to the hospital for the monitoring of vital signs. Information about the patient (e.g., demographics and insurance) could be obtained by the hospital information system (HIS) and stored on a patient record. This information could then be passed to a particular department information system (DIS). Typically the DIS is a product of one company, while the HIS is the product of another company. As a result, the databases between the two will differ. Further, they will capture/retain and send different levels of granularity in the data. Once the patient information has been received by the DIS, the patient can be scheduled for a parametric study (a parameter of the parametric study is a grouping of vital signs). Next, the parametric study is performed by a clinician. Images and measurements are taken and sent to the DIS server. The reading physician (e.g., a medical specialist) sits down at a review station and pulls the patient's parametric study. The medical specialist then begins to review the images and measurements and creates a complete medical report on the study. The medical report can then be coded as a structured report (SR) document including clinical data codes describing the contents of the report. When the medical specialist completes the medical report, the report is sent to the DIS server where it is stored and associated with the patient through patient identification data. The completed medical report with clinical data codes is one example of the kind of report that could be sent over a network to a data repository as a binary data stream.
Typically, these binary data structures contain data values that define how to interpret binary sub-structures that follow in the data stream. In turn, those binary sub-structures may contain additional type fields that define further sub-structures within them. As the process continues, forming a hierarchal set of structures, a large and complex data structure can evolve, resulting in slow data transmission over low bandwidth communication lines.